*****
Ouch! The Gospel reading for the 22nd
Sunday in Ordinary Time on Cycle C, Luke 14:1, 7-17, hurts!
The Gospel narrative is about humility and
preferential option for the poor.
As the Church, how humble are we?
As Fr. Mario Quejeres of St. Walter Church in Roselle,
IL, puts it, humility is about serving others as it is about putting others
first. It echoes these words of Fr. Pedro Arrupe SJ, “Hombres para los demas”.
Jesus links, in the Gospel narrative, humility to a
service for the poor.
We are good at serving each other. But, how good are
we in serving the poor, really?
Sure, we run and serve various charity programs for
the poor. And we are proud of ourselves for doing something good for the poor,
don’t we?
But, Jesus demands more than these charity kinds of
social service programs, as you can see from the Gospel narrative.
Jesus’s expectation is to invite the poor for a kind
of dinner party that we usually do for the wealthy donors. Not just to typical
social service programs, such as soup kitchen or food pantry, but to, say,
dinner for wealthy donors held at a bishop’s mansion.
Does your pastor joyfully host a dinner party – not for fundraising or whatsoever, but simply for having the poor, the disabled, and the vulnerable, for the Gospel’s sake, in your parish hall? Does your bishop hold such a dinner party for the least among us in his mansion?
Perhaps not as frequently as they host such events for wealthy donors, even they do.
Given the way we serve the poor and the vulnerable, this reality is like a slapping wake-up call to this Gospel truth: preferential option for the poor and the vulnerable, found in Luke 14: 12-14.
When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
Does your pastor joyfully host a dinner party – not for fundraising or whatsoever, but simply for having the poor, the disabled, and the vulnerable, for the Gospel’s sake, in your parish hall? Does your bishop hold such a dinner party for the least among us in his mansion?
Perhaps not as frequently as they host such events for wealthy donors, even they do.
Given the way we serve the poor and the vulnerable, this reality is like a slapping wake-up call to this Gospel truth: preferential option for the poor and the vulnerable, found in Luke 14: 12-14.
When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
When Fr. Pedro Arrupe SJ wrote about the preferential
option for the poor and the vulnerable in “On
Poverty, Work, and Common Life” in 1968, as Jesuits Superior General, he
was reminding that our Church is for and of Christ among the anawim. Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:31-46
certainly tell that he is found among them. Therefore, Church’s preferential
option for the poor and the vulnerable is, in essence, our practice of
Christ-centered life.
Running charity programs like soup kitchen does not
suffice Jesus’ expectation to put our pastoral priority on the poor and the
vulnerable, explicated in Luke 14:12-14, unless we become too cozy in making
the Church a cesspool of hypocrites.
A pastor may say, “But, we cannot upset our wealthy
donors as it may sound like putting them on the backburner, if we had to give
priority to the poor. We need to treat these wealthy generous parishioners well
so that we keep the funds to run various charity programs for the poor”. If
this is the case, this pastor is totally blind to Jesus’ teaching of the
preferential option for the poor and vulnerable in Luke 14:12-17, echoed in Fr.
Arrupe’s 1968 letter and the 1983 Code of Canon Law, 222-2.
If wealthy donors truly embrace the spirit of Jesus’ teaching on the preferential option for the poor in Luke 14:12-14, then, they will be rather so glad to see the poor and the vulnerable brothers and sisters in Christ are given their reserved seats at a banquet held in a bishop’s mansion. And, according to Jesus, this is how the Kingdom of God will look at the eschaton.
Perhaps, ever since the Vatican II, the Church has
become less Christ-centered, as more emphasis is put on us. For example,
compare how Mass had been celebrated before the Vatican II and how it has been
since then. Back then, both the presider and we face Christ in the Tabernacle.
But, today, since the Vatican II, the presider faces us, turning his back to
Christ in the Tabernacle. Symbolically, this may be a reason why so many
bishops and pastors are blind to the true virtue of humility manifested in
genuine service in reflecting the spirit of the preferential option for the
poor and the vulnerable, found in Luke 14:12-14, Fr. Arrupe’s 1968 letter, and Canon
222-2.
Ad
fountes – as the Vatican II has also called us to return to
the foundation of the Church, faithful to the teaching of Christ in the
Gospels, let us take Jesus’ words on the preferential option for the poor and
the vulnerable to our hearts. This way,
we would not panic when Christ returns to judge, given Matthew 25:31-46.
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